


a little tune that tells the story of what the night is thinking

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [187]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Estrela is so good and she shouldn't blame herself but, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lake Mithrim, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-chapter 3 of FingonFic, everyone blames themselves here, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “You really do not remember?” Finrod presses. “Anything about—about last night?”
Relationships: Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [187]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	a little tune that tells the story of what the night is thinking

In the night, in poppy-drenched sleep, when she does not have any eyes at all, the world roars.

_Estrela—Estrela—_

Doctor Fingon did not forget, did not call her _Belle_ again. But this was not Fingon’s voice. It was Melkor Bauglir’s; a funeral clash rising out of a deep cavern.

 _Estrela_ was not the first name she heard called. Not the first of the roaring.

But Estrela was weak, and remembers the fury of the night all out of order.

Dawn comes late here, just as dusk falls early. When Estrela wakes—truly wakes—the air is white and cold. This is half the morning light, streaming through the canvas that is again above her, and it is half the mist that has risen off the lake. Her hands are stiff and angry, still, though the balm Fingon applied a day ago has doubtless helped scabs to form. Scars are protection, of a sort.

Sticks is curled against her spine, and Frog is in her arms, with his head against her breast. The children’s breathing comes and goes at differing paces. That is because they are small.

Estrela will never bear children. No man would desire her; no man has even molested her, since she was a pretty, fierce girl with two eyes and a foolish will. The harsh-handed guards that Gothmog (and before Gothmog) kept chose other bodies to keep them warm.

She has not been grateful _in the right way_ , for this.

It is a kindness, at any rate, to have the children beside her. It is a kindness when she is as young as she is and as useless as she is, with many years (it seems) of uselessness ahead of her.

She presses her lips to Frog’s head. He smells like the earth, because he is always climbing in dry grass and loose soil.

_Amlach’s mother was beautiful, though her wrists were always raw from how often they shackled her, and her nails were bruised and torn. She was known to scratch and claw like a wildcat, if cornered. The men mistreated her. Still, she would not submit to them._

_Estrela only knew this in pieces, and knew it afterward. She was aware of little else but the pain and panic of her flapping flesh. Of the torture of eating and drinking. She begged for death whenever she opened her single, sight-searing eye._

_Amlach’s mother, who spoke only her own tongue, had traded herself willingly at last, for the stranger with half a face. She did so, more particularly, for clean cloth; for waxed thread; for liquor. For the potent poppyseeds that some of the men hoarded like gold._

_Estrela died under Mairon’s hands, screaming instead of speaking—_

_Belle was born because her body did not die._

_Melkor returned north. She never knew why. She knew very little, with the flesh flapping from her bones, with the world black on one side._

_She could have been his bride, which was one horror. She became his forgotten slave, which was another._

_Belle, born, went weeping west, chained in secret wagons beside Amlach’s mother. She lived and healed in ridges, as mountains healed the land._

The tent-flap is drawn back.

“Forgive me,” Finrod says. He of the yellow hair. The fringed deerskin. “Estrela—we need you.”

_Useless._

She struggles to rise, trying not to wake the children. They wake anyway.

“Belle,” Sticks says. “Belle, I dreamed of Russ—”

“Hush,” Belle mutters. “Hush, Sticks. You mustn’t.”

Finrod helps her up. “I am so sorry,” he says to the children. He speaks to them (and to everyone) with kind sincerity. He has never been cruel. Estrela knows that by looking at him. At first she had to look long, for the last time she saw hair near to that shade, falling over back and shoulders—

But no matter. No matter, her hurts.

“I know you said you did not know where they had gone,” Finrod continues. There is a thread of desperation stitched through his smooth voice. Estrela can hear the ridges. “But…my uncle and I, we would hear what you _do_ know. May we come here?”

“I…said?” Estrela asks, blearily. “I—”

“Do you not remember?”

The night, roaring. “No.”

Finrod clears his throat. “Ah. I—”

“I’ll come with you,” she says, struggling to her feet. “Sticks, will you stay with Frog?”

Sticks is white-faced, almost white-haired. She nods. She curves her bony limbs around the boy, whose eyes are softly shut.

Therefore, thereafter, Estrela rises, clutching a shawl to her that Wachiwi gave to her. She feels like Belle again. She has had Russandol in her mind in every moment since she was herself again—it is like that day in the field, when he had been whipped and left for dead, and she had to keep on working. She had prayed that day, and she supposes she could pray now.

But what good would it do? Russandol _is_ dead, this time. Mairon will have done it very horribly, his death. Will have hurt him in every way that a man _can_ be hurt, before he is a beast of blood and moaning.

For her part, Belle is all a sob, under her ribs. She wants to take _him_ , take that beautiful face and the thin, wasted body, wants to lay his head against her breast as Frog was sleeping, just now. She wants to smooth his soft hair, and comfort him.

She wants the strength to fend off Mairon and his eager knife. 

_You shall not have him! You shall not!_

Oh, to have that strength.

Finrod steadies her elbow. “I am sorry.”

“No—I said that I would come.” They gave her shoes. Fingon’s sister did. The girl with the dark hair (Estrela had hair rather like that, once). The ground is hard anyway.

“You really do not remember?” he presses. “Anything about—about last night?”

Dread, and the knowledge that she has lost something that will matter. That is…not enough.

The people who came to save, and the people whom they saved, are huddled together in this cold camp. Fires are burning where fires burned before, pitting the ground with ashes. The lake is a cloud between them and what lies on the other side.

Estrela (she is Estrela again, but barely) doesn’t know.

Finrod does.

Fingon does.

_Where is Fingon?_

Fingolfin and Haleth and Turgon are gathered in a knot of conversation at the corner of two tents. They must not wish to seek shelter for themselves; the day is chilly, but not unbearably so.

Also, they are leaders. Hardy and generous.

Estrela feels a lump rising in her poor throat.

“Estrela,” says Fingolfin, who looks like Fingon with twenty years and twenty losses more upon his shoulders, “Are you well enough to be here?”

She nods.

They are—grieving. Even Haleth’s young, impassive face is very grim.

_Where is Fingon?_

_Where is Gwindor?_

The answer, and their many questions, come as no comfort.

_Russandol is—_

(Theirs he is _theirs_ as well as hers, and they have lost another to his foregone loss—they have lost young Doctor Fingon, and Gwindor, too, is gone—)

Useless. She is as useless as the day she spurned Melkor Bauglir. As useless as the day she hung from her bound wrists, butchered and moaning.

She reels, and has nothing to give them.

_Amlach’s mother died bringing her little son into the world. She died not because she had stopped fighting, but because she was too young._


End file.
